"For Folk and Land:
the struggle for genuine agrarian reform
as a national struggle"
At first, agrarian reform in the Philippines has been one of the major social issues the present order treats with contempt or as a propaganda piece.
Originally seeks to solve the centuries-old problem of landlessness in rural areas, this program, described as a "difficult task" by the order, has undergone various laws and measures, the latest was through the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extended with Reforms(CARPER) initiated in 2015. This recent program updated those of its past laws, with the government trying to address key national goals particularly the promotion of equity and social justice, food security and poverty alleviation in the countryside.
However, despite the lofty goals, the program remains yet to be completed as it currently burdened with major issues - from opposition and suspicion by landlords and entrenched interests, neoliberal-oriented economists viewing the idea with great skepticism, lack of support from legislators, lack of financial and material resources, and general public apathy.
But despite the setbacks and loopholes to the program, peasants and its supporters continue to assert an alternative, "genuine solution" to the agrarian question that lingers for centuries, with much of the skepticism about every measures offered having deep roots in history and at the same time a major issue within the National Struggle.
Revisiting the past
As a former colony of Spain, the Philippines inherited an agrarian program that was feudal in character. Mostly intended as gifts to those participated in pacification campaigns, vast tracts of lands were in the hands of the few while tillers worked on it as outright workers or as sharecrop tenants. The native aristocracy do also have their share of lands in exchange for loyalty, but vast landholdings were rather appropriated by religious orders- the friar lands which totalled some 53,330 hectares shared by religious orders like the Augustinians, Dominicans, Franciscans, and Recollects. These lands originally meant to sustain their missionary work, however turns out to be for their secular interest.
It was also during the Spanish regime when the government attempted to systematise land tenure by urging landowners to secure titles to their lands. But the system worked in reverse as affluent and influential groups used this system for landgrabbing, hence relegated small landholders to the role of share tenants. This aggravated as. The feudal order in the Philippines got a glimpse of capitalist characteristics through shift from sustenance to those of cash crops, all for export abroad like Coffee, Cacao, Indigo, and Sugar.
This exploitative kind of situation became a factor for the Filipino folk to join in the struggle for independence. Whereas the Filipino intellect fought out of civil libertarianism, the masses fought mostly for their right to till. There were also plans encouraging Filipinos to become pioneers in unchartered lands, like in the case of Jose Rizal with his "Nueva Calamba" plan in North Borneo, but this plan was quashed nonetheless by the Spaniards themselves citing lack of manpower if not simply an outright disagreement by the authorities.
During the first Philippine Republic in 1898, the government headed by President Emilio Aguinaldo attempted to expropriate huge landed estates, especially the "Friar lands". However, since the republic was short lived, and the personages of the first republic as nonetheless trying to defend their interests, the plan did not materialise.
During the American colonial period the problem on land tenure was tried to be addressed by the authorities. Several laws were passed to regulate and improve, among which was the Philippine Bill of 1902 giving more specific conditions on the disposition of friar lands; the Land Registration Act of 1902 (Act No. 496) providing for a systemic registration of land titles under the Torrens system; and the Rice Share Tenant Act of 1933 (Act No. 4054) regulating relationships between landowners and sharecroppers, especially tenants of sugarcane fields. These attempts continued during the period of limited self-rule (commonwealth) as existing laws on self-tenure were amended giving more freedom to the landowners and tenants to enter under tenancy contracts not contrary to law, morals, and public policies; providing for compulsory arbitration of land disputes and agrarian conflicts; and suspending any action to eject tenants. There were also expropriation of landed estates and big landholdings initiated by the government, leasing to farmworkers such as in the case of Buenavista estate in Bulacan. Furthermore, an attempt for homesteading was done through the National Land Settlement Administration, with Mindanao as its focal point for its projects. Landless farmers, especially those who opted not to work in the haciendas were encouraged by the government to become pioneers, settling in virgin public agricultural lands.
But despite these efforts meant to pacify tensions between the landed gentries and the farmhands, these failed to stem the tide of agrarian unrest. Revolts like the Sakdalista, Tanggulan, to those of the Colorums showed how the struggle for land as also entwined with the struggle for independence. And as in the late Spanish period, agriculture was primarily devoted to the needs of international capitalist interests as Sugar, Copra, Manila Hemp, Coffee, and Copra became much needed crops for export. From this somehow meant for plantations to expand their farms, that affects smallholders in the countryside as well as those of national minorities, furthering exploitation with meagre salaries and slavelike conditions.
During the Second World War, the desire for social justice was intensified as one of the calls by the old Communist Party. Through its armed wing the HUKBALAHAP, the zones controlled by the said force involves a land to the tiller program. Prior to this, most agricultural fields were controlled by the Japanese as well as its collaborators with production primarily devoted to rice and cotton, with the latter used for the production of explosives. Landowners were also divided by loyalties, some remained loyal to the American-supported commonwealth with its promise of self-rule, while others became outright collaborators of the Japanese, who also carried with the same thought of "independence" as their basis for their occupation. In areas that the HUKBALAHAP controlled, they set up local governments (Barrio United Defense Corps) and instituted land reform, dividing up the largest estates equally among the peasants and often killing the landlords. In some cases, however, landlords were welcomed as participants in the resistance, swayed by anti-Japanese sympathies through the slogan "anti-Japanese above all".
But this brief moment of agrarian freedom brought by the HUKBALAHAP through its liberated zones end short lived as the liberation and return of the Commonwealth government meant a return to prewar social order. Using the restoration of law and order as its pretext, landlords used both police and the military to repress tenants and its organisations, driving them to armed struggle, making tensions further than its prewar and wartime pasts. Much of the land continues to held by big landlords, with most of them became legislators and office holders even in a time where much pressure on the latter years of the commonwealth to the early years of the republic to redistribute land to the landless.
In response, postwar-era agrarian reform programs in the Philippines were more an elite response to rising peasant unrest aimed at avoiding land redistribution than a wider social measure aimed at a more equitable and democratic society. Mostly focused on resettlement over land redistribution to the tillers if not regulating production relations between landowners and tenants (especially on sharing crops and rights to till), this palliative measure was (and perhaps even is), a sentiment rather than a serious matter of social justice.
From the 1950s onward, the land reform laws that were implemented, such as the "Agricultural Tenancy Reform Act" and the "Agricultural Leasehold Act", among others, tended to be mere concessions to tenants and were insufficient to bring about fundamental changes in the structure of land ownership. The Agricultural Land Reform Code, aiming to abolish tenancy and established a leasehold system in which farmers paid fixed rentals to landlords, was also weakened by the failure of the landlord-dominated Congress to allocate necessary funds for effective implementation of the law.
But despite these alleged intents, these policies did not transfer ownership to peasants and merely focused on regulating production relations between landowners and tenants. Multinationals also engaged in agriculture especially in the production of Pineapples, Bananas, and other cash crops in partnership with local landlords.
In 1972, through Presidential Decree no. 27 under former president Ferdinand Marcos, the order offered a limited land redistribution window by covering only rice and corn lands. However, the value of the land was fixed at two and a half times the average harvest of three normal crop years immediately preceding its promulgation. It was then made to be paid for 15 years of 15 annual payments with 6 percent interest per annum. On the other hand, it was the same Marcos regime that was also in connivance with multinationals and landlords- that prior to the creation of Presidential Decree 21, he urged landlords to shift from subsistence to cash crops, and partnerships with multinationals engaging in agribusiness.
So were the succeeding regimes. Contrary to the expectation of the folk in attaining justice for the Farmers, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), being the centerpiece of the Aquino administration's social legislative agenda was as same as its predecessor acts.
More like an amended PD27 tailored-fit for the new regime, the law ideally paved the way for the redistribution of agricultural lands to tenant-farmers from landowners, who were "paid in exchange by the government through just compensation but were also allowed to retain not more than five hectares of land." However, this same law also made corporate landowners allowed under the law to "voluntarily divest a proportion of their capital stock, equity or participation in favor of their workers or other qualified beneficiaries", in lieu of turning over their land to the government for redistribution. Thus, instead of land distribution, the Cojuangco-owned Hacienda Luisita reorganized itself into a corporation and distributed stock, a controversial move that distorts the very essence of Agrarian Reform.
The Ramos, Estrada, Arroyo, and the Aquino regimes did continue treating land reform as a populist ploy with words like "productivity", "tenant emancipation" and/or "rural development" while at the same time continues to accommodate multinational/transnational agribusiness conglomerates in big farmlands. Certain provisions of the law still protected the interests of landlords, with the latter supporting the interest of the other especially when it comes to expanding for new markets. And despite numerous measures meant to improve the program there were also constraints such as the need to firm up the database and geographic focus, generate funding support, strengthen inter-agency cooperation, and mobilize implementation partners such as farmers groups, non-government organizations, local governments, and the business community.
During the Ramos administration, policies on agrarian reform were focused on accelerating direct land transfer and non-land transfer through adopting more rational, fair and inexpensive settlements. It encouraged landowners to invest in rural-based industries that are connected to agriculture in an attempt to shift from subsistence agriculture to agribusiness.
Estrada also followed suit with the program focused most on fast tracking land acquisition and distribution. It wanted to reduce uncertainties in land market in rural places to help farmers’ efficiency and private investment to grow. It encouraged joint ventures, corporative, contact farming and other marketing arrangements to protect the status of stakeholders and promotion of agri-industrialization.
However, the Agrarian Reform program is itself contrary to the neoliberal "agricultural modernization" plans which involved large-scale land acquisition at the expense of the farmers. As in the past, the intent Furthermore, neoliberal-oriented laws like the RA 8178 known as "An Act Replacing Quantitative Import Restrictions on Agricultural Products, Except Rice, with Tariffs Creating the Agricultural Competitiveness Enhancement Fund, and for Other Purposes" repealed the Magna Carta of Small Farmers of 1991, which protected products of small farmers and replaced all quantitative restrictions on agricultural imports with tariffs, this and other related laws further consolidate interests from entrenched entities and exploiting further poor farmers towards serf-like conditions.
Last 2009, the Arroyo administration passed a law trying to "improve" the existing Agrarian Reform Law through the "Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms" (CARPER). Given its name as "Extended and Reformed" the law at first is an amendatory law that extends again the deadline of distributing agricultural lands to farmers for five years and has provisions that were generally favorable to their intended beneficiaries. However, like its predecessor laws (including CARP), it was again essentially the result of a compromise between pro and anti-agrarian reform blocs in the Philippine Congress with provisions inserted by landed gentries that are considered loopholes in the law.
So was during the Aquino administration when his predecessor's land reform efforts under CARPER were then extended. In 2012, a Supreme Court decision ordered the total distribution of Hacienda Luisita to its beneficiaries. However, only 4,099 out of 6,453 hectares had been distributed while the remaining goes to the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway, malls, factories, and even creeks, while others end reserved for possible commercialisation projects. In 2013, the contested "Stock Distribution Option" was replaced by a lottery system- that created confusion if not opposition from farmer-beneficiaries due to resuffling. Worse, harassments occur that involved state elements against farmers.
Agrarian Reform today
At present, the program, in general continues to further hampered by an ineffectual bureaucracy in undertaking, what more of incursions of property developers (especially those engage in real estate targeting agricultural lands in Mega Manila) and other rent-seekers, as well as expanding special economic zones, in line with the expansion of urbanization into the countryside leading to further land conversions and the displacement of peasant and indigenous communities, or expanding corporate farming interests (mainly in connivance with landed gentries and the government) especially those of cash crops thus exploiting rural communities and others for cheap labour. Apologists may brand these as agricultural modernisation, "new thinking", and the likes; but agricultural liberalisation, or any form of liberalisation, that includes privatisation (also called commercialisation or corporatisation), deregulation, and denationalisation of patrimonies never served anyone except those wielding political and economic power. As in the past, the order have marked their own selfish interests at the cost of sustenance and livelihood of hundreds of thousands of Filipino families.
And contrary to its developmental intents, agriculture-related funds like the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund will only serve those who controlling it, particularly the granary owners and rice dealers/importers with entrenched interests, as well as anomalously used funds such as those from tobacco excise taxes as more than enough proof that such agri-related funds hardly reach farmers and fisherfolks yearning for development.
Opposition to this unjust measures are even responded with the "law", making controversies unavoidable as they encountered landlords openly harassing peasants with guns and forcing them out of the lands. Worse, there are landlords who are in connivance with state authorities in harassing and displacing in the name of "counterinsurgency" measures such as "Red-tagging", harassments, even murder those who assert land redistribution and social justice.
And as an offshoot of such repressive policies and actions brought by the order, peasant unrest continues to aggravate like in the case of Mendiola Massacre in 1987, Hacienda Luisita in 2009, Kidapawan in 2015, the dispute in Lapanday in 2016, and others that authorities downplaying all these as a "product of deception by subversive elements". With these situations, the struggle for land and justice continues as a part of national struggle for independence. Regardless of the attempts, the order is not serious to appreciate this kind of campaign, let alone a rhetoric meant to appease the folk with piecemeal reforms and all. This attitude was and is to be expected, either seeing legislators and officials under the strong influence of landed interests, to those of groups in connivance with multinationals and local despots insist amendments to existing agrarian reform laws/programs to those of outright scrapping. Progressives within the legislature are seriously trying to push for a genuine agrarian reform with land to the landless and rural empowerment as its primary measures, and still fighting.
Hoping for the future
As any other National Issue, the demand for Agrarian Justice continues to resonate in the countryside. No matter how its critics and apologists of the order tend to downplay it, this issue on land and justice for the peasantfolks is a major matter that the order tend to dismiss as an issue on landlord-tenant relationship or a matter of property dispute.
But for the Filipino peasant, and in extension the entire community, the issue on land lies the redemption of the nation itself, for it has been one of the reasons to fight for the nation's independence, alongside the struggle for political, civil, and economic rights of a citizen.
That even in this present time continues to linger. Protests for land and justice resonates alongside right to just wage and better working conditions, women's rights, to those of struggle for national sovereignty, these and more would say been "nightmares" to an order that's trying to keep firm their interest.
All in all, it is unsurprising that agrarian reform, was and is, a major issue the order failed to addressed as such. Primarily driven by the intent to lessen the tension between the order and the people, this kind of measure, as any other issue, are all made against the backdrop of rebellion, what more exacerbated by the abuses of the order itself, making their fear of mass violence, with the threat of an outright full blown rebellion as itself imminent.